We have not yet been offered any dementia specific drugs

jmack8

Is this problematic? My mom has been difficult to diagnose. Thankfully she did stay at the doctor's office long enough to get a cognitive assessment which diagnosed her with moderate to severe cognitive decline from unspecified disease. I have another post here about the mess with trying to get medications for her (the pharmacist asked us what we wanted??) but we were only given a choice of SSRIs, anti-convulsants, and anti-psychotics. We were not offered ANY drugs to help with disease progression or with cognitive impairment.

WHY would this be? I am wondering if we need to move to a new team? Or is this typical with a Stage 5 dementia patient?

Also, with my parent's current health insurance, moving "teams" might be difficult. Her care is carefully curated and affordable. We also have the same health insurance and are very pleased with the doctors that provide care for my family for a variety of health conditions including type 1 diabetes. But I need to know if we're missing anything major here!

Again, she's recently diagnoses but is already at Stage 5 according to her medical team.

Thank you!

M1

Hi jmack, i remember your previous thread. Unfortunately, at stage 5, none of the drugs are likely to make much difference, so I wouldn't worry about that. The sad truth is that there is no effective therapy. The drugs you hear about - Aricept, Namenda, Exelon patch - are minimally beneficial at best even for those with confirmed Alzheimer's and tend to have a lot of side effects. The figures say that about one in ten will benefit, one in ten will have intolerable side effects, and for eight out of ten it won't have any effect one way or the other. It's still a dismal prospect.

jmack8

Thank you so much for your response! That is helpful.

H1235

My mom has vascular dementia. It is the second most common. There is no medication for it. So if they (doctors) are not confident it is specifically Alzheimer’s then I can see why she was not prescribed medication. It’s hard to accept.